As he reviewed his troops at Shiloh, he beheld on every side his friends of other days, and men who had served under him on other fields.
When the War between the States came on, Johnston was a brigadier general in the United States Army; and although he was offered any position he might desire with the Federal government, he resigned to cast his lot with the South, and against the land of his ancestry, for he was a son of Connecticut. Texas had been his home, and to the Lone Star State he felt his allegiance due.
Disappointment, as pertained to his life ambitions, had often before waited upon his footsteps when the thing desired seemed ready to his grasp. Yet, seeing his duty clearly, he did it.
To his sister by marriage, when she, in surprise at his action in resigning, wrote him in California, where he was then stationed, he replied that he was deeply sensible of the “calamitious condition” of the country; and that whatever his part thereafter regarding it, he congratulated himself that no act of his had aided in bringing it about; that the adjustment of the difficulties by the sword was not in his judgment the remedy.
Secession was to him a grievous thing.
Arriving at Richmond from the West, General Johnston was given the command of the Western Department of the Confederacy.
From September to February, 1862, he held the line against heavy odds at Bowling Green, Ky., when he retreated to Corinth, Miss., where he assembled his entire army and attacked Grant at Shiloh Church near Pittsburg Landing, Tenn.
In the flush tide of a great victory, he was struck by a Minie ball and expired in a few moments.
He rode a magnificent black animal called “Fire-eater.” On horseback General Johnston appeared to distinct advantage. The masterly manner in which he sat his horse attracted the attention of the commander in chief of the army, Thomas J. Rusk, during the Texan Revolution, and procured him the appointment of adjutant general over several eager aspirants for the position.
As he passed along the lines to the front of the troops at Shiloh, he raised his hat and cried out,